The Australian National Travel Association (ANTA) - Australia’s peak semi-government tourist body - operated from July 1929 with a mission ‘to place Australia on the world’s travel map and keep it there’. ANTA produced many iconic travel posters of the 1930s to the 1950s. It advertised extensively in different media, including magazines and films, within Australia and overseas. Estonian-born German Gert Sellheim, who migrated to Australia in 1926, was one of ANTA’s earliest and most original artists. Sellheim’s posters were not tokenistic. They portrayed a real rather than idealised vision of Australia. Other early artists for ANTA were Percy Trompf, James Northfield and Douglas Annand.

‘Why not Victoria?’

Sellheim continued to work in commercial art and collaborated many times with writer Oswald L. Ziegler. Sellheim designed the book and Ziegler wrote the text. This example, with plentiful photographs of Victoria’s holiday spots, has a foreword by the then Prime Minister Joseph Lyons, who makes the book’s purpose clear: ‘Glancing through these pages, one is forced to wonder why tourists should leave Australia before they have viewed the magnificent scenery of their own country’.

With artwork attributed to renowned poster artist James Northfield, this poster, in three states, gives an idea of how a colour lithograph was created. Chromolothographs are produced by printing from smooth-surfaced limestone or zinc plates that have been chemically treated. Each colour is applied separately. Northfield had an extensive career in commercial art and taught at Melbourne’s Art Training Institute.

Swallow & Ariell was an enthusiastic advertiser throughout its long history. Founded in the 1850s, it was purchased by Arnotts’ in 1964. This poster, and the object of the little girls’ attention, features one of their most popular biscuits, the Uneeda.

• The Sell: Australian Advertising 1790s to 1990s – Swallow & Ariell

Harold Cazneaux and Wolfgang Sievers were two influential photographers who worked in advertising but represented different traditions. Cazneaux’s pictorialist approach featured soft, artistic compositions, while Sievers, trained at the Bauhaus, brought a modernist style with sharp lines and dramatic contrasts.